All Rise...

Editor's Note

The Charge

Where do you go when the record is over…

Opening Statement

Here's a dark secret for you: I hadn't previously seen Saturday Night
Fever until I sat down to review it. Been jamming to the historically catchy
grooves featured in the film for decades now, and I understood through the
cultural subconscious that John Travolta knows how to dance. This
prepared me for the unabashedly funky, stylish context of Saturday Night
Fever. I was completely unprepared for the brutal personality conflicts,
sharp dialogue, rampant despondency, and subtle condemnations that form the
subcontext of the movie. This is not a simple dance movie, and it still speaks
to 21st century audiences.

Facts of the Case

In 1970s Brooklyn, a hard-edged group of guys are struggling through youth.
Their temple is the 2001 Odyssey, a popular discotheque where they while away
their hours, dollars, and brain cells. Chief among them is the charming but
belligerent Tony Manero. His life is spent in uninspired drudgery working at a
hardware store and being pigeonholed by his parents. The only thing that
inspires Tony is being on the dance floor, wowing the appreciative crowd with
his grace and sensuality. Yet when he leaves the lights and sounds of the dance
floor, his troubles are still waiting.

Tony is unaware of his natural leadership, and his ambitions are of the
basest kind: a new shirt, a hot girl, a four dollar raise. His blend of charm
and menace is enough to hold his friends in check, and his shortsighted
ambitions keep them all in sync. They drink, dance, and carouse at night, then
try to make it through the next day intact.

The 2001 dance contest and its $500 prize motivate Tony to find a new dance
partner. She has ambition, and struggles to differentiate herself from the blue
collar scene around her. Tony's friends find her snobbish; Tony is captivated by
her dancing and her spirit while annoyed at her phony attempts to prove her
superiority.

As they prepare for the contest, Tony's gang gets more and more off center.
His focus shifts towards planning for the future, their focus stays on causing
mayhem. Events come to a head and Tony has to make some hard choices about who
he is and what he wants out of life.

The Evidence

The Saturday Night Fever experience begins as soon as you pick up the
DVD case. Like Tony Manero, the case is slim, spartan, yet flashy. It looks like
those plastic-coated, glitter T-shirts from the '70s. The DVD portfolio slides
out to reveal Tony strutting and smiling on the dance floor. Opening the
portfolio reveals a grainy shot of a bruised and dejected Tony Manero, his life
crashing down around him. At risk of taking a metaphor too far, the case matches
the movie perfectly. (And unlike some other "special" DVD cases, this
one shouldn't annoy you too much.)

Approximately three seconds after popping the DVD in the tray, a smile hit
my face. The menu is outstandingly vibrant, funky, and eye-catching. I sat and
watched the menu animation recycle a few times just because watching it was so
much fun. I punched "play" and sat back.

The film opens with Tony strolling down the street with a paint can.
Everything moves in sync to the music ("Stayin' Alive," if you're
curious), like in that "interesting" Volkswagen commercial. Decked out
in wide collar and funky shoes, his walk down the street is fascinating. Neat
camera work, focusing on the shoes, shows Tony's raw machismo. You immediately
get a sense of his natural charm (smiling at the ladies), his grace (the way he
walks down the street), his materialistic desires (checking out some new
threads), and the frustration and intensity brewing within him (scowling as his
half-hearted come on is rejected). If it wasn't for that paint can, you could
imagine he was on his way to a dance club. But the paint can inevitably drags
him back to the hardware store where he works.

Films employ a visual language to get concepts across. In some cases,
analyzing the symbolic undercurrent of a film is completely unrewarding. The
complexity just isn't there, and you feel pretentious trying to extend the film
a line of artistic credit. Saturday Night Fever is one of those
increasingly rare films that rewards you for paying attention to the symbolism.
John Badham establishes his craftsmanship and finesse early and delivers
throughout. Characters' motivations and desires are revealed through glances and
facial expressions. This movie could so easily have gone over the top,
lambasting us with heavy-handed clichés set amongst a disco backdrop.
Instead, Badham coaxes subtle and moving performances out of the actors.

So let's discuss that disco backdrop. The legacy of Saturday Night
Fever is polyester, platform shoes, mirrored balls, and other trappings of
the super-funky discotheque scene. When Travolta is on the floor, he IS godlike.
If I could have seen dancing like that, my ass would have been glued to a
barstool in the disco every night. There are other noteworthy dance
performances, but Travolta is the showstopper. The lights are pulsing, the music
throbbing, Travolta is dancing, life is groovy. I can see why this movie spawned
(reflected?) a cultural revolution.

That said, Saturday Night Fever is not about disco per se. Paramount
markets it as an urban tragedy. While it doesn't contain out-and-out graphic
violence, Saturday Night Fever shocks through open depictions of
hostility, rebellion, racism, sexism, violence, rape, drug abuse, and religious
pressure. Tony has many concerns, weights that drag him down: his family rides
him incessantly, his job is going nowhere, his life is uninspiring, he has no
money, car, or apartment. His friends' lives are equally unfulfilling. Their
fast driving, in-fighting, drug use, and women abuse make for a depressing
character study.

Let's talk about that character study for a minute. The emphasis is on
realism, and it works. The dialogue is shockingly good, and they let it play
out. A good example is when Fran Drescher walks up to Travolta and says
"So, are you as good in bed as you are on that dance floor?" They step
on the floor and dance. She asks the question again. Travolta says something
like "well, if you f*** as good as you dance, you must be one lousy
lay." Now in many of today's films, that would have been it. Either that
would have been the witty burn that ended the scene, or the gal would have
slapped him and walked off. Not so here. She responds that she hasn't had any
complaints. So Travolta sets in again, insinuating that her lovers don't know
the difference between a good lay and a bad one. The point is, they keep
talking.

Saturday Night Fever deftly avoids clichés. The climax of the
movie could so easily have been the results of the dance contest, given that
Tony spends most of the time preparing for it. But by the time the contest
occurs, it has already taken a back seat to the more urgent question of where
his life and the lives of his friends are going. The climax is a little jarring
in its suddeness, but in retrospect, it works.

There is a great irony about Saturday Night Fever: the disco image
portrayed in the movie caught on like wildfire. The soundtrack went off the
charts. Finger pointing and police whistles became popular icons. Yet the people
who embraced the flash portrayed in Saturday Night Fever were the ones
being dissected and subtly condemned in the film. The disco is not portrayed in
a positive light. It is at best a banal money drain, at worst a bellows fanning
the flame of drug use, violence, and rape. But John Travolta does such a great
job coming alive (and staying that way) on the floor that he became an idol.

The acting is top notch. To achieve a pathetic element, a film must make us
care about the characters. These characters are real, they make us care.
Travolta takes top honors in this category. It is his first starring role, and
he runs with it. His smile lights up the screen, his frown darkens it. He is a
major league a-hole, yet we like him anyway. As a viewer, I can identify with
how his gang must feel.

Music is the pulse of Saturday Night Fever. It is difficult and
unreasonable to separate the soundtrack from the film; they are symbiotic. This
is the sound that single-handedly resuscitated disco! Not only does the music
sound great, the 5.1 remaster sounds as though the film was recorded with Dolby
Digital in mind. This is the best 5.1 remix I've yet heard. I've noticed a
similar quality in A.D. remixes (after digital): the surround effects sound
soulless, as though half the sound was ripped out of them to remain in the front
speakers. The center channel is too boisterous. The overall feel is, well,
digital rather than organic. In Saturday Night Fever, the surrounds are
used frequently and seamlessly without sounding artificial.

The video transfer looks super-clean. I won't go so far as to say sparkling,
because no matter how good a job they did (and they did), you can tell this was
shot in the '70s. Newer films like Training Day have a smooth image that
jumps off the screen. Saturday Night Fever doesn't have that—but
let's be reasonable, it is 25 years old. Watching the deleted scenes shows just
how good a job they did on the transfer. Those scenes are the before to the
film's after. Overall the transfer gets an A, but there are some video
issues…

The Rebuttal Witnesses

…I'm seeing red, and I'm seeing it everywhere. I heard that the color
red bleeds in Saturday Night Fever, but that they had cleaned it up for
this transfer. If they mean "clean up" in the sense of "throwing
on a baseball cap and new shirt when you haven't taken a shower," then I'm
there. I appreciate that they used such vibrant colors, but stay in the lines,
fellas! I didn't want to touch the screen for fear that my fingers would get
stained.

Travolta saved this film in more ways than one. He worked for nine months to
learn the dance moves he used in this movie. He choreographed some of the dance
numbers. He poured blood, sweat, and tears into the dancing. And what happens?
The editors put him in extreme close-up so we can't even SEE him DANCE! If
Travolta hadn't been in the cutting room and showed them what to do, we wouldn't
have had some of the finer moments in the film. Unfortunately, he wasn't there
to edit the whole movie.

The extras are of fine quality, and on the surface they seem plenty: deleted
scenes, a 45 minute VH1 "Behind the Music," and a commentary by
director John Badham. But I can't help but feel the extras were a little sparse.
I'd love to see the trailer, for example. The disc completely ignores the whole
"Rated R to PG" transition that is a part of this film's history.
Also, how hard would it have been to throw some kind of funkiness into the
extras? A guide to disco, perhaps? Or maybe a mini-tutorial on some of
Travolta's moves?

Closing Statement

This is a movie and DVD treatment that is hard to fault. I'm amazed that I
liked this movie so much, 25 years after the fact. I'd be tempted to hail it at
the first modern film, if I had the education and knowledge of film to make such
a distinction. The acting, story, technique, directing, characters, and coolness
all work together. Throw in the music and cultural phenomenon, and you have a
winner.

This is a movie I'd be willing to bet you'll see at least twice. The case
doesn't take up much room, and it is so cool to look at! Can we keep him, Mom,
pleeease? If this is a movie you would consider renting, you might as well buy
it. Gene Siskel loved this film so much he bought Travolta's white suit, which
puts the price of the DVD in context.

The Verdict

Tony Manero, you have been charged with disturbing the peace, drug use, rape,
and generally being a heel. But you have done so with such style and charisma
that the court is inclined to ignore your transgressions. You are free to return
to your beloved disco, but the court begs you to get out of that dump and make
something of your life. If I see you in this court room again, I won't be so
lenient.